Drunkard's Walk Forums

I will spare people the litany of pain and cursing that was 2 attempts at the trial, and instead impart what lessions we have learned (others feel free to tack
onto this list)

General notes about team builds:

You need two people who can rez, cause your going to be dieing a lot. And i'm not talking about the medicine pool here. Real un-interruptable rezzing. (Or
Recall friend and a medicine pool is ok)

Having more than one tank is also good, but make sure you have Psi resists (mind raping hydra did bad things to everyone, slightly less bad things to Ruff)

Recall friend (or summon team) is a godsend here.

How we ran the arc:

1) Beat up 100 ritki (easy!)

2) Get to the trial door (easy for some, frustrating for others)

3) Make our way down the shaft and pick up crates as we go (a little frustrating, but doable)

4) Clear out the ritki guarding the 4 generators, but DON'T kill the generators themselves.

5) Pull the mini-kraken away from Hydra and pound on them

6) Kill the tentacles (Lts first, as they spawn the minions). Standard powers work here, but plasma guns make it go faster. Ruff was happily nomming them.

7) take out the generators AT THE SAME TIME.

7a) Assign 2 people to each generator (per compass directions) that is their generator, they always deal with that one.

7b) beat each generator down to ~1/4 health, and WAIT for the leader to give the go ahead

8) once the generators have dropped, everyone with a particle cannon swarms the hydra and hurts it as much as possible.

8a) those without particle cannons try and keep those with them alive, as firing it is about a 30 second animation where you can't do anything.

9) one the generators are back up, kill the ritki that were summoned.

repeat steps 7-9 as needed untill you run out of time or kill the hydra.

oh, and most importantly: you need a leader that will LEAD, and a team that will FOLLOW DIRECTIONS. This can't be stressed strongly enough.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

-blinks-

Have they recently changed this? ... Well recently meaning in the last 3 years? Waaaay back when I on the Freedumb server this was easy.

I have distinct memories of running on a sub-optimal team... a /INV tank, a axe tank, a few blasters, and a troller and we licked the trial. It was a weekly to
daily event. "Let's go slap that Hydra... who's go toons in the right ranges? Who's going to hold the guns?" I was on my AR/Dev
blaster... and I only faceplanted once.

yes, they changed it drastically. Mainly by auto-exemplaring everyone to 40.

I ran this before the change with Fren (my 50 fire/ice blaster) and had a ball.

Now I don't think it would be quite so easy.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

They altered it in Issue 12 so that it now operates correctly.

Initially, the team had to have a leader in the level range (38-40), but everyone else would remain at the levels they were, regardless of SK/Exemp issues.
Now, it exemps 50s down to 40, thus rendering getting to the Hydra's head through the sewers (where each mob near the end was white/yellow con) a
significantly more difficult process, and the Hydra's mobs themselves significantly deadly.
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."

IIRC, I remember hearing that Hydra was always tanked by a /regen scrapper, since they didnt care what type of damage they took heh
There is no coincidence, only necessity....
- Clow Reed

It was a beating but Patrol xp on a 46 that's got xp turned off made it less of a hassle. However... it's kinda hard to do a TF of any sort when
Wire's standing behind you huffing about being late.

I'd just like to note that Willpower is a very handy set to have down there. Not only can you chuckle heartily at the psi damage the Hydra spews at you,
you can utterly ignore the holds and slows it spams you with that keep others rooted in place so it can do the brain-melty thing.

The downside is that there's a lot of neg. energy (Rikti) and toxic (tentacles) damage flying around down there too, and an alpha strike from those hurts
WP just like anyone else. Ow.

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs

Well, you do have negative/energy defense as a WP tank. It's not much worse than your psi defense, IIRC. Toxic is a different animal, though.
-- Acyl